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An Ontario woman will appear before the Court of Appeals to fight for compensation for what she says is trauma suffered during jury duty.

Tori Stafford, 8, was brutally raped and murdered in 2009. A juror in the trial of one of her killers says she was traumatized and suffers PTSD as a result of the graphic evidence. (DAVE CHIDLEY / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO)

An Ontario woman says she suffered bouts of depression, rage and compulsive shopping in the weeks and months after serving as a juror in the trial of a man accused in the brutal rape and murder of 8-year-old Tori Stafford.

The woman’s lawyer, Barbara Legate, said her client suffered a “precipitous decline” after the trial, spending large amounts of money on items she later forgot she purchased — a reciprocating saw, new furniture, clothes, even rescue dogs.

“She was looking for some kind of comfort and solace and that’s where she went,” Legate said.

The juror, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, will go to court next month to seek compensation for the trauma she says she suffered.

While sitting on the jury during Michael Rafferty’s two-month trial, the woman visited the scenes of the rape and burial, saw photographic evidence from the crime and heard eyewitness testimony from Rafferty’s girlfriend and accomplice, Terri-Lynne McClintic.

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Rafferty was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012 in the 2009 death of the Woodstock girl. McClintic was also sentenced to life in prison.

In a submission to the Ontario Court of Appeal, the juror said that, almost immediately after the trial, she lashed out at her children, suffered from depression, had flashbacks to trial evidence, and experienced loss of short-term memory and loss of concentration.

The juror said she has been diagnosed with PTSD and an anxiety disorder, is on long-term disability leave from her job and “continues to suffer a psychological injury and to struggle emotionally and financially.”

Ontario’s Compensation for Victims of Crime Act defines a victim as a person injured or killed by “any act or omission in Ontario of any other person occurring or resulting from … the commission of a crime of violence.”

The CVCA’s definition of “injury” includes a “mental or nervous shock.”

The juror applied to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in 2014, seeking reimbursement for the costs of her treatment, lost wages and other expenditures she said were brought on by her traumatic experience.

The board denied her application, saying that, in order to be a victim of nervous shock, a person must witness an exceedingly violent crime or come upon the scene in the immediate aftermath, have a close personal relationship with the person directly injured in the crime and have a “significant diagnosed/recognized psychological injury” from the incident.

The juror appealed the Board’s decision to the Divisional Court, but was denied.

On Nov. 8, she will argue her case before the Ontario Court of Appeals.

“We ask jurors to sit through days, weeks and sometimes months of testimony and sometimes that testimony is very, very difficult, and we ask them to keep it to themselves, not discuss it with people outside,” said Legate.

“One of the things we need to look at as a society is (whether) something needs to be done throughout the trial to help them cope and certainly at the end of the trial do they not need some information about what to look for … that might be indicative of trauma,” she added.

Under Ontario’s current system, judges can decide to recommend that jurors receive counseling at the end of a trial. Jurors can then be connected with counselors by the Ministry of the Attorney General or pursue counseling on their own.

Attorney General Yasir Naqvi said, in a written statement that he has heard the criticisms of the current system and “intend(s) on raising this issue and working with the judiciary and our justice sector partners to see how we can ensure we are supporting” jurors.

Toronto defence lawyer Daniel Brown said other jurors and even lawyers have said in the past that particularly gruesome trial details have led them to suffer from PTSD.

“As we learn more about these types of areas, we realize that sitting through a very long trial dealing with somewhat horrific facts, especially when it relates to the death of young children as in the case of Tori Stafford, can have a lasting impact on the participants of the process,” Brown said.

He added that judges are more mindful of those impacts now, and that they do recommend help for trial participants when they think it is needed.

“(But) there is no mechanism in place to follow up with jurors and keep track of them to ensure that they’re coping well,” he said.

“Jury members play an important role in our justice process,” said Brown. “We can’t forget about them at the end of the process especially if and when they’ve been traumatized.”

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